CQUniversity MGMT 20135: Critical Thinking - Article Review Report

This report presents a critical review of an article investigating the influence of cultural background on critical thinking performance, particularly focusing on language proficiency and structure. The review delves into the research background, problem, core questions, and methodology employed acr...Read More

RUNNING HEAD: Critical Thinking and Managerial Decision Making
Critical Thinking and Managerial Decision Making

Critical Thinking and Managerial Decision Making 1
In contemporary societies, the capability for evaluating the information trustworthiness is
considered to be an important skill specifically while considering the propagation of unvetted
information via use of mass media and internet. One of the important areas of debate is whether
there is any contribution of the ethnic background to the dissimilarities in critical thinking
performance. Working memory resources will be required for the purpose of thinking critically.
However, there are restricted resources available in case of working memory and in case if
sufficient amount of those resources are expended for the purpose of utilizing a language in
which there is low proficiency, then satisfactory implementation of critical thinking will suffer
due to non- availability of adequate resources (Butler, Pentoney & Bong, 2017). In this essay, an
article is reviewed that comprise of two related studies. This essay aims to review an article
which is also based on contentions regarding whether there is any contribution of the cultural
background to the dissimilarities in critical thinking performance.
The critical analysis of the article firstly provides the background of the research. The study was
conducted for the purpose of examining the fact that whether there is evidence for supporting
both (i) explanation of language proficiency and/ or (ii) explanation of language structure in the
critical thinking of the written work of students. The decision of using critical thinking was
grounded on the fact that evaluation statements include expressions of critical evaluation which
is significant to the idea of applying critical thinking. The term critical thinking can be defined as
the active and skilled interpretation and assessment of communications and observations,
argumentation and information (Manalo & Sheppard, 2016).
The review of the article provides that the research problem consisted of the fact that Japanese
was considered as the most suitable language to examine as it is most inductive and indirect in
comparison to English. Critical evaluation skills are considered to be thinking skills and the
language of instruction should not be bounded by acquisition. The important question considered
here is whether limitations or constraints in the language used could detrimentally impact the
performance evaluation (McPeck, 2016).
The core research question addressed in the article is how language might affect critical thinking
performance. The term language here refers to language proficiency or language structure. This
question is important to be addressed as there were various previous researches that claimed the

Critical Thinking and Managerial Decision Making 2
struggle of non- western students regarding the demands of representing critical thought (Liu,
Frankel & Roohr, 2014).
The methodology adopted in the research is divided into study 1 and study 2. Two hypotheses
were tested in study 1. The first hypothesis was related to the fact that the production of
evaluation statement by the learners in English and Japanese would vary. The second hypothesis
was that the skill/ proficiency of the students in a specific language will be associated with the
quantity of evaluative statement produced by them in that particular language. 110 participants
were selected from among the students of Japanese University for whom Japanese is L1 and
English is L2. The procedure used included the provision of a page of Japanese translation that
deals with the manner of making valid arguments. A 90 min class session was conducted through
which the students were familiarized with the Titanic and Space Shuttle Challenger disasters.
Then the analysis was made of the aggregate number of sentences along with the number of
evaluative sentences. Such sentences were calculated and recorded in the written work of the
students. Then accordingly the measurement of language proficiency was made and the
operational criteria were drawn up (Kettler, 2014).
On the other hand, three hypotheses were tested in study 2. First was that lower use of target
language was manifested in the first year students as equated to the students of second year from
whom data was collected in study 1. Secondly, the differences in the use of evaluative language
will be constant across Japanese and English. Thirdly, the proficiency of the students of first year
in both languages will not unassociated to the quantity of evaluative language produced by them.
The method adopted in this study was the same as that adopted for study 1 (Jackson, 2015).
The major findings of study 1 provided the number of evaluative sentences to be F (1, 108) =
4.81, p = 0.030, p2 = 0.006 and the total number of sentences to written to be F (1, 108) = 11.47,
p = 0.001, p2 = 0.020. The results of the research clearly predicted that fewer sentences were
produced in Japanese due to the reason of greater proficiency of students in that particular
language which, in turn, enabled them to effectively produce difficult sentences (Schechner,
2017). The results of study 2 provided that the number of evaluative statements were F (1, 152) =
27.20, p < 0.001, p2 = 0.130 while the total number of sentences are F (1, 152) = 22.90, p <
0.001, p2 = 0.113. These results indicate that fewer sentences and evaluative statements were

Critical Thinking and Managerial Decision Making 3
written by the first year students in comparison with the second year students. However, more
sentences were written by the first year students in English than in Japanese (Halpern, 2014).
The findings are significant for the future research as in addition to the language proficiency, the
critical evaluation of the performance of people is also influenced by a number of other factors
like working memory capacity, general intelligence or communication skills. Such factors are not
dependent on the language used for expression. These factors can be easily identified and
examined in future researches. Future researches can also be grounded on the fact that how the
evaluative languages of the Japanese students can be compared to that of the students whose first
language is differently structured (Nosratinia & Zaker, 2015).
In my view, there are certain limitations with this research. The research was not planned to be a
complete investigation of language structure hypothesis. The research only made examination
regarding whether there are observable differences present in the written work of the students of
Japanese university due to the existence of critical thinking qualities dependent upon the
language mostly used i.e. English or Japanese (Fairclough, 2014).
The review of this article further provided that the hypotheses conducted was based on certain
assumption. The assumption included the fact that when the instructions regarding the
undertaking and conveying of critical evaluation are not received, the language proficiency of the
students will not make any changes to their creation of evaluative language. This will be due to
the fact that the students will suffer from limited knowledge of the structures that form the basis
of producing the required language. The assumption taken by the authors are correct as it is
impossible for the students to produce another language without having the required knowledge
(Eftekhari, Sotoudehnama & Marandi, 2016).
The article is effective and credible as the research conducted acts as the evidence of the results.
It provides that the L2 proficiency of the students turns out to be a limiting factor for the students
in the use of critical thinking skills. It further offers suggestions that the use of educational
strategies should be made for the purpose of improving the non- native speaker proficiencies of
the students in English. When these strategies would be successfully implemented it will result in
the reduction of perceived deficiencies of the critical thinking competencies of the foreign
students (Forawi, 2016).

Critical Thinking and Managerial Decision Making 4
Therefore, it can be concluded through the review of this article that appropriate classroom
instructions play an important role in facilitating the development of the abilities of the students
for demonstrating the critical thinking competencies in the work produced by them. It was also
witnessed that the writing profiles of the second year students were the same as that of the first
year students. Furthermore, without the receipt of explicit instructions, the majority of the
students cannot be expected to become aware of the manner of effectively demonstrating the
critical evaluation in the work produced by them. The lack of correlations between L 1 and L 2
proficiency of first year students along with their usage of the evaluative language underlined the
requirement of providing critical evaluation training to students.

Critical Thinking and Managerial Decision Making 5
References
Butler, H. A., Pentoney, C., & Bong, M. P. (2017). Predicting real-world outcomes: Critical
thinking ability is a better predictor of life decisions than intelligence. Thinking Skills and
Creativity, 25, 38-46.
Eftekhari, M., Sotoudehnama, E., & Marandi, S. S. (2016). Computer-aided argument mapping
in an EFL setting: does technology precede traditional paper and pencil approach in
developing critical thinking?. Educational Technology Research and Development, 64(2),
339-357.
Fairclough, N. (2014). Critical language awareness. Routledge.
Forawi, S. A. (2016). Standard-based science education and critical thinking. Thinking Skills and
Creativity, 20, 52-62.
Halpern, D. F. (2014). Critical thinking across the curriculum: A brief edition of thought &
knowledge. Routledge.
Jackson, S. L. (2015). Research methods and statistics: A critical thinking approach. Cengage
Learning.
Kettler, T. (2014). Critical thinking skills among elementary school students: Comparing
identified gifted and general education student performance. Gifted Child
Quarterly, 58(2), 127-136.
Liu, O. L., Frankel, L., & Roohr, K. C. (2014). Assessing critical thinking in higher education:
Current state and directions for next‐generation assessment. ETS Research Report
Series, 2014(1), 1-23.
Manalo, E., & Sheppard, C. (2016). How might language affect critical thinking
performance?. Thinking Skills and Creativity, 21, 41-49.
McPeck, J. E. (2016). Teaching critical thinking: Dialogue and dialectic. Routledge.

Critical Thinking and Managerial Decision Making 6
Nosratinia, M., & Zaker, A. (2015). Boosting autonomous foreign language learning:
Scrutinizing the role of creativity, critical thinking, and vocabulary learning
strategies. International Journal of Applied Linguistics and English Literature, 4(4), 86-
97.
Schechner, R. (2017). Performance studies: An introduction. Routledge.